Her Job Is Securing Community`s Future

May 2, 1985|By Dorothy-Anne Flor, Staff Writer

When Elizabeth Deinhardt moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Fort Lauderdale in 1979, she arrived with a conviction and a plan. Her conviction was that every community needs a community foundation. Her plan was to start one in Broward County.

In December 1984, Broward Community Foundation began with ``a blue-ribbon board of directors`` and a budget of $15,000 from anonymous donors. The non- profit foundation will administer bequests, donations and other gifts for the benefit of the community.

Fort Lauderdale attorney James Blosser is board president. Stewart Kester, chairman of Florida Coast Bank, is vice president. Other board members include Deinhardt and her husband, Jack, owner of Multicon of Florida Inc.; Fort Lauderdale attorney William Gundlach; shopping center developer Leonard Farber; Walter Howard, president of Landmark First National Bank; Novatronics president Al Novak; and Thomas O`Donnell, publisher of the News and Sun- Sentinel.

Deinhardt serves as secretary-treasurer. There are no paid personnel.

As the foundation`s money grows, agencies and organizations representing arts, social services, education, science and civic affairs can apply for support for new or changing services. Ultimately, the foundation will offer planning, educational and coordinating services to all community organizations to help avoid duplication of effort.

The concept isn`t new, Deinhardt says. The first community foundation was established 70 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. Today there are approximately 275 in the United States, from small new foundations to those with enormous assets such as the San Francisco Community Foundation, which tops the list with nearly $500 million. Dade County has a community foundation with approximately $5 million in assets; Palm Beach County Community Foundation has just topped the $1 million mark.

Deinhardt likes to compare the Columbus Community Foundation and the new Broward Community Foundation because greater Columbus and Broward County are about the same size.

Broward Community Foundation is rich with its $15,000 beginning. ``Columbus began 40 years ago with a $25 gift. Today this foundation has assets of more than $64 million. Last year, it made grants of nearly $6 million.

``You can imagine what that could mean to Broward County,`` she says.

A Columbus native, Deinhardt received a liberal arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and became an interior designer. She married Jack and they had four children, now grown. A member of the Junior League of Columbus, she worked for league projects for 15 years. ``After I became a league sustaining member, the league president asked me whether I would be interested in working with the Columbus Community Foundation and I was,`` she says.

For the next seven years, her job was to interview everyone who applied for grants. ``To do this you need an intimate knowledge of your community and its needs and to be able to evaluate people who ask for money. You have to decide whether their plans would merely be something important to themselves or would truly have the largest possible impact on the area,`` she says.

``Here, I see myself as kind of an agent to get Broward Community Foundation launched,`` she says. This did not come about overnight. ``Jack and I were aware of this lack in the community soon after we arrived but it took several years to come to know both the area and enough people to really have any worthwhile involvement.``

To get to know people, as well as to continue the volunteer pattern she always had followed, she joined the Fort Lauderdale Opera Society. This year she finishes a two-year term as Opera Society president. She has served as chairman of the art auction benefiting the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale and is a member of the boards of the Opera Guild of Fort Lauderdale Inc. and of Broward Symphony Society. Her husband is treasurer of the Museum of Art and of the Fort Lauderdale Symphony Orchestra Association. He is also a member of the boards of educational television station WBPT and the Opera Guild of Fort Lauderdale.

Two years ago she began talking to Broward community activists in an effort to assemble a board of directors that would be responsible for setting foundation policy, nurturing its growth and overseeing the grants program. By December 1984, she had ``really come up with a first-class board. We have people who are highly respected for their contributions in other areas; who have a broad spectrum of interests in the community, a lot of civic and community experience, and are willing to give this a try,`` she says. ``Jack helped me and gave me a lot of support in the early stages.``

Deinhardt works without pay in an office donated by Multicon of Florida Inc. in Fort Lauderdale. She spends at least half a day five days a week urging people to consider using Broward Community Foundation for their philanthropy. ``Many people in Fort Lauderdale come from elsewhere and do their giving there. We hope that wherever they used to live, they come to realize that now they live here and that this community needs their support.

``The time will come when a person of means will be embarrassed to die without leaving a gift to his community through a bequest to his community foundation. To do this is to achieve a kind of immortality.``